This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up? Hello, greetings. Welcome back. I am Chris Guillebeau. Here on Side Hustle School, we have just finished week number 16.
Amazing. Longtime listeners know that a side hustle is a project you create to earn money apart from your day job. It's not only about earning money, it's all about creating more freedom for yourself. So whether you hate your job and you're trying to make a big change, or you love your job and you have no plans to leave, everyone should have more than one source of income. And the whole point of the show is to guide you along that path to your first, your second, your fifth, your 10th hustle.
Now I got an email with a question from a listener named Wyatt the other day. And Wyatt says, "Do you know of a way to research if your idea will work before getting too far down the path? How do you know if it's feasible? If it'll be successful, if there's a demand for it?" Well, totally fair question. But my answer is you really don't know until you try.
I mean, this model, this side hustle school model is all about experimentation. It's about taking action quickly. It's much more about that than advanced planning, validation, some traditional entrepreneurial things you may or may not be familiar with. If there was some guaranteed way, everybody would be doing it. But what's great is that you don't necessarily have to take a lot of risk.
You do have to experiment, you do have to take action, but the risk is very low. In this week's set of stories, for example, four out of six were able to get started with very little money. It's all about using your knowledge, figuring out what skills you have that can be transferred to this kind of income generating project. So totally fine to ask yourself, what if it doesn't work? What if it fails, et cetera?
But I think you should also ask yourself, what if it works? What if this idea actually takes off? What would that mean for me in my life? Now, I also heard from a bunch of people on the new Hustle hotline. As a reminder, if you have a question or comment for the show, you can call 844-9HUSTLE and we might feature it right here.
So speaking of that, let's dive right into a couple of questions. Hey, Chris, I absolutely love your show. I listen to you because I'm an entrepreneur myself. I'm calling from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm 24 years old and my boyfriend and I have created a business called Fuel Fudge and it's organic, super food packed, coconut oil based fudge, always a mouthful to say.
Do you have any advice for creating an elevator pitch and just getting your product just out there? If you do, I'd love to hear it. - Thanks. - I believe that caller was Amanda. Thank you, Amanda.
Your business sounds awesome. So two points here. It's called Fuel Fudge. I think you described it as something like organic coconut oil based fudge, which is indeed a mouthful. What I wondered is, what does it do for people?
How does it help them? Like it sounds good, organic, coconut, okay. How does it help me? And I think you already had the answer for that. Like I was looking on your Instagram account, which is fuel.fudge.
And there you mentioned it's energy sustaining fuel, no more sugary pre-workout gels and an alternative to unhealthy sweets. So I feel like you're already on that right track to thinking much more about benefits, not just what it is, but how it's gonna affect people's lives. And as for getting the word out, well, it's an organic product. I wonder how the word could spread organically. And that tends to happen from communities of the people who could benefit from this the most.
So I think you should ask yourself, like where are those communities? Both online and offline. When I thought about offline, I immediately thought about running races, triathlons, CrossFit gyms, like wherever people like that gather. And those people gather online too. One thing you might wanna check out, there's a subscription service called Stridebox.com that sends samples in the mail every month to a group of active runners.
I wonder if it might be worth seeing if you could get your product in that. Those are my quick thoughts, love what you're doing. I will check out fuelfudge.com. - Hey, Chris, my name is Jane. I'm calling from Ohio, love the show, really giving me hope that I can find a side hustle.
My question is, I'm not artistic, I'm not a professional, I have no special skills, and I am really struggling to find a side hustle that'll work for me. Do you have any thoughts about just those regular folks out there who don't have web coding, artistic ability, or have access to massive computers or stuff like that? I really appreciate some thoughts on just the regular guy trying to put together a side hustle. Love the show. Thanks a lot, bye.
- Hey, Jane, you're awesome. Thank you so much for listening. You know, just for the record, I don't have web coding ability or much in the way of artistic skill either. I'm a high school dropout, and eventually I went to college, kind of found my way, but I really don't have a lot of technical skills, and the majority of the stories that I feature on the show, they really are just regular folks, or at least that's my goal, and they might have some specific skill that they then kind of draw on for their hustle, but for the most part, they don't go out and acquire a bunch of new skills. So I want to refer you to episode 48, which I believe is titled UX Designer Doubles Her Income with Next Level Tarot Cards.
Now, in the beginning of that episode, I mentioned a really simple exercise that you can do or anyone can do. This exercise is really good if you're not sure what your skills are. Short version is to make a list of all the different ways you spend your time when you have a choice about it. So that includes hobbies, art, music, sports, what you like to read, what you do when you go online, and if you had a wide open day, how would you spend that day? Now, that may not give you all the answers you need, but very often some kind of focus can emerge from this process, and the answer may be in combining two of those things in some kind of unique way.
So check that out, it's episode 48. I hope it's helpful, and thank you so much, Jane, for listening. [Music]
So when we look back on this week, there's a few things that kind of stand out to me. Key theme here, it's not just about what kind of work you do, it's about how you do it. So we looked at a professional service, which just so happened to be snuggling.
We looked at an e-commerce website, which was selling swimsuits online, a subscription service, where people pay for weekly recipes that are sent by email, product manufacturing, a social worker who makes jewelry and sells it on Etsy for about $2,000 a month, a blog from a chemist who starts by tutoring, but then builds this very popular website, number 10 in the world for chemistry, makes a great income from it as well. And then lastly, a storefront gym, about a guy who hates exercise and devises this method of only working out 10 minutes a day. So again, service, e-commerce, subscription, product, blog, and storefront gym, which we could say is retail. To take two of these examples, running a blog is very different from operating a gym with clients. And it's not that one is necessarily better than the other, but no matter who you are, you would probably prefer one of those things.
Some people one, other people the other. So it's important to know yourself and to choose projects that suit your strengths. There's also often different ways to pursue any particular business idea. James, the guy who writes the chemistry blog, he's thrilled that he's been able to transition to this passive income model of selling guides and earning money while he sleeps. That is indeed awesome.
But it's also cool that if for some reason that business didn't exist, he would still be able to make a substantial income, either full-time or supplemental, through the kind of tutoring he was doing before he started focusing more on the website. So as we go forward and explore different ideas, I'll always be thinking about not just what kind of work you want to do, but how you want to do it. All right, so coming up next week, a bunch of awesome news stories. There's a graphic designer who turns a side hustle into an $80,000 a year project, a Shopify employee who manufactures handmade wooden desk accessories, something that involves warm homemade cookies being delivered to your home at night, basically the greatest thing ever, several other stories and more listener questions that we're gonna add in as we go along. There is so much more to come and I look forward to sharing it with you.
Before I sign off for the week, I want to give credit where credit is due. Side Hustle School is recorded on location at World Domination Headquarters in Portland, Oregon. It is then transported to Brooklyn, New York by Concord Jet to be produced at the Panoply Studios. My production team there is Jason de Leon, A.C. Valdez and Laura Mayer.
Back in Portland, "Show Notes and Magic" are by Whitney Kerinek. My cat Libby Gillibow is in charge of chasing down intruders and yarn all over the house. We do not have a professional snuggler on staff, nor do we have a professional smuggler. Life Advice this week comes from the band Rush. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Whoa, deep thoughts. And we, Side Hustle School, are part of the Onward imprint curated by bestselling author Gretchen Rubin. Onward is a collection of podcasts with actionable ideas for how to make your life happier, healthier, more productive and more creative. Check it out at theonwardproject.com. Last but not least, hey, how's it going over there?
That's right, I wanna thank you, the listener. You're the reason I make this show. It is free and listener supported with just a single sponsor per episode. If you're enjoying the show and you'd like to say thank you to me or the production team in a way that costs you nothing but a couple of minutes of time, I'd be really grateful if you'd leave a quick rating and review in iTunes. That would be super awesome and it will help other people discover the show.
In every episode, I mention inspiration is good, but action is even better. I want you to take action. I want to hear about you making extra money, creating more freedom for yourself and also having fun. A Side Hustle is an investment in yourself and your future, but it can also be something you look forward to. As for me, I look forward to making this show every single day.
I'll be back tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. Episodes go online at 601 a.m. Eastern time every day. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
